Community Spirit

How do you keep the tight-knit family-like community feeling going in your forum? I feel that it is important to develop relationships with your members and for them to do the same with other members of the community.
This makes for an extremely friendly environment where everybody feels like they are very much like family.

So how do you instill this feeling, and keep it going?

 

Wellll, surprisingly, after all that we "suffered" our spirits are still lit. The users from Pisoga believe we will be what we were and more, specially with the new administration. A lot of my moderators say that they get excited when I am excited about something on the forums, whether is a new plug in, a design idea, or a goal we've reached, just keep the hype up! Be straight forward, look to the future, and encourage the users to, well yes pisoga was awesome back then in 07, but 09 will be better.

 

I think you'd need to get members talking outside of your forum for that... arrange meetups, post photos of yourselves together, get them exchanging Christmas cards, let them use that newfangled CometChat

 

Not really, almost 2 years and a lot of the old members of Pisoga are tight-nit family. A lot of us have a "family", example: Me and my FullMetals! \o.o/ FullMetalSoldier, FullMetalEdward, FullMetal2010[Sayomi], Edokun, etc!

Actually we really do have a Pisoga family tree. Some of us have some as far as talking on the phone, but we've never seen in person.

 

I disagree. It has happened completely naturally on my forum. The members are so close together and religiously sign-in. Not always to discuss the topic of our niche, but to chat with their new-found online friends and "family".

I have done nothing to encourage such a community-like feeling; it all just happened. Now that members have strong ties with each other and as a whole community, I do everything to protect that - but I never started it.

Normally on a forum, in the Chit-Chat section there are all sorts of random discussions. Just fun stuff.
Here are some from my forum:

• My daughter is getting divorced; we need advice.
• Lost my job today - I'm in TEARS!
• My twins' birthday party was today; here are some photos
• Back from vacation - enjoy the photos!
• We're moving!

To me, those are definitely community-like and much more personal discussions. My members really do confide in each other with their personal matters, and it strengthens the community as a whole.

It's very pleasing to know that my members enjoy the site so much in this regard.

 

The occasional contest, a wiki page for our site (members, groups and crews, etc), online radio, regular feedback

 

My forum lucked out. We are actually a sister site to a much larger role playing site and the first members already knew each other. As I stated elsewhere, the journals section in the forum works wonders at keeping the community feel.

 

I could probably write a book on maintaining tightly knit communities past 200-250 active daily members. Communities successfully growing past that normal ceiling undergo a very marked transformation. How you handle that will make the difference between losing a member for each you gain and shattering that glass ceiling.

Probably a series of articles, honestly, it's not simple, or cut and dried.

 

I would love to read those articles!

 

As would I. Vekseid, you have proven to be extremely knowledgeable on a variety of aspects, and I would be very interested in reading any material you can come up with.

 

Good topics and a friendly atmosphere will keep members logging in...As nick said the odd personal post/thread helps get members talking and know abit about each other..

We have a sub-forum on TilersForums.co.uk | Tile Forums | Tiling Forum where you have to given access to view posts and the members have a much more relaxed atmosphere in there and chat about alsorts...We have a good community and one I am very proud of ...

Back to the main forums/public sections....CONTENT is king...if google can find you then can the public/new members and thats what you want..VISITORS and members..

 

On my forum the spirit is kept up high mostly through offline meetings, every 2 to 4 months

 

Family wise, you can have a forum and have as many users as you want and keep them, but after going through a lot, and after the site/forum being nearly 'destroyed' and STILL having some of those users JUST because of the people, that's what I call a family.

 

Chronic pain and spine issues inherently draw people close--connecting with people that have lived "in similar shoes" and that truly "get it" is priceless.

 

I just try to be friendly - unless they catch me on a bad day - and continue to come up with new competitions etc for all to enjoy, and encourage people to take part in discussions.

 

I'm pretty much the same. If they happen to catch me on a bad day, it's usually not obvious - unless I mention my mood (sometimes people can tell... so there's no hiding it :lol: ).

Generally, I tend to not create new discussions for the members to participate in (after a certain period of time - during the beginning stages, I try to spark activity constantly), but rather encourage those to participate in existing discussion created by their fellow members. In turn, this allows members to get to know each other on a more personable basis, creating a much more satisfying "family" experience as a result.

 

Just giving them a place to talk with strict rules works for me.

 

ours just happened naturally, people just got to know eachother on the forum, and cause the members are so friendly to new members, making them feel at home from the first post (several members have said that)

loads of us, after getting to know eachother over the forums, started talking on msn, added eachother on facebook, exchanged phone numbers and send eachother christmas and birthday cards we are kinda like a big happy family

we havent arranged a proper full forum meet up yet, but a few members have met in person.

with my other two forums though, it would be harder for us all to meet up cause theres members from loads of different countries-in the first forum we are mostly all from the uk.

as one is a gaming forum, several members play online games together, although i do fail at most games